Here’s a look at African American people and issues making headlines throughout the country.
California
The board of directors of the Black AIDS Institute elected new officers to take on the challenges and opportunities in 2013 and lead the organization in a new strategic direction while continuing to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Black communities. The new board chair is Neil Lowe, Ph.D. Lowe is a partner at NoLimitss, a boutique business intelligence and data analytics firm focused on new revenue identification and organizational transformation. He has served on the Institute’s board for six years, most recently as first vice chair. The officers have the task and responsibility of leading the Institute in a new direction. The approach includes five strategic objectives: fully implement the Affordable Care Act; support people living with HIV to come out of the closet; increase demand for treatment; integrate biomedical and behavioral interventions; and promote organizational retooling for an evolving response to the AIDS epidemic in a post-healthcare reform world and one where biomedical interventions will play an ever increasing role in ending the AIDS epidemic.
Singer Toni Braxton said she is happy to be home after being admitted to a hospital for treatment of lupus, an autoimmune disease that affects a high-percentage of Black women. Officials at a Los Angeles hospital admitted the 45-year-old singer on Dec. 14. Physicians also treated her for blood clots.
District of Columbia
Alterations will be made to a controversial paraphrase carved into the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The plan, which must be submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, calls for the removal of paraphrase, “I was a drum major for peace and righteousness.” The memorial opened in 2011, and the paraphrase immediately became a source of controversy because it was taken out of context, complained Maya Angelou, the poet and writer. The wording made it sound as though King was boasting, Angelou said. The full quotation, taken from a 1968 sermon King delivered two months before his assassination by James Earl Ray, reads: “I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.” Work on the removal will begin in February and be completed by spring 2013.
